One common complaint, and one to which I have fallen prey in the past, is that “no one reads the documentation”. This seems to be a particular problem for documents recording process and procedure. In this series we will look at how you can write documents that people will actually read.
We will look at every aspect of documentation, including each of the following.
- Audience — Who are you writing for? And, how to make sure your document appeals to them.
- Content — What are you writing about?
- Structure — Creating documents that make finding information easy.
- Presentation — Creating documents that are appealing.
- Delivery — The different methods of delivering information.
Many documents focus only on content, neglecting all other aspects. This is in part because many documents are written to the same formula by domain experts. They are not written to be read, they are written to comply with a requirement that they exist.
This series is not interested in producing documents for compliance, it is interested in producing documents that are useful and used. Read the rest of this entry ?
